Editor’s Note: This is the first installment of Scott McKay’s new novel, King of the Jungle, which will be released exclusively at The American Spectator in 10 episodes each weekend in February, March, and early April, before its complete release on Amazon later this spring.

March 10, 2024, Las Claritas, Bolívar, Venezuela

“Are the men ready, Hector?” asked the commander with an impatient scowl.

“Si, coronel,” came a simpering response.

The commander scoffed inwardly at his adjutant’s subservience. Mayor Hector Carvajal had achieved his rank through favor rather than merit, an all-too-frequent occurrence in the Ejército Bolivariano, the land force of the Fuerza Armada Nacional Bolivariana, or National Bolivarian Armed Forces of Venezuela. Carvajal was only 29, a slight little man from a good family in a good section of Caracas, the capital, and he’d attended the best schools and then the Academia Militar del Ejército Bolivariano, the army’s military academy at Fort Tiuna in the capital.

Carvajal, Cabrillo knew from his file, had not graduated with honors from the academy. He had graduated. And in the year since Carvajal had joined Cabrillo’s command staff of the 53rd Jungle Infantry Brigade, he wouldn’t go much further than that in his assessment of his adjutant.

Carvajal was there. He was adequate, if barely. He did what was asked of him, if barely.

Cabrillo knew that Carvajal was not where he wanted to be. Especially not here. Not in Las Claritas, a muddy little shantytown on a roadside at the edge of a wilderness where the 53rd had set up camp for the present on its way to destiny.

He knew Carvajal was likely to enjoy his future much less. The little major at least had a bedroom in a requisitioned house, though it was a servant’s bedroom. Cabrillo’s was considerably nicer, though he didn’t use it much. There was too much to do.

And there were few bedrooms where they were going.

Cabrillo also knew Carvajal was not enamored with his commander. There was nothing surprising about that. After all, Manuel Lopez Alejandro Cabrillo, Coronel in command of the 53rd Jungle Infantry Brigade, was neither soft like Carvajal nor even Venezuelan.

Cabrillo, like much of the command structure in Venezuela’s military and intelligence community, was Cuban. And he knew that made him quite unpopular with not just the inferior men like Carvajal but the more substantial ones as well.

That was a minor concern to Cabrillo. There was a reason why he and his fellow Cubans were here. They were loyal to the government of Nicolae Madiera, the president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, which wasn’t exactly the same thing as loyalty to the people of Venezuela.

Cabrillo knew that well. He’d proven his loyalty to the regime often since arriving 20 years before. It wasn’t easy, at least at first. There had been blood, more of it in recent years, as the regime had been forced to take more and more aggressive steps to hold power while the country declined.

The consequences of those steps hadn’t been very friendly to the 53rd, as desertions and retirements had decimated its numbers. Just six months earlier, when Cabrillo had been promoted to his current rank and given command, his total strength was down to just 2,600 men.

The mission for which they were preparing would require twice that number.

Cabrillo had spent the past half-year recruiting and training — the latter a far harder job than the former. With conditions in the country deteriorating, young men with no other employment available and desperate to earn sustenance for their families were happy to join, and there were plenty of them available.

Finding men they could turn into soldiers, men who wouldn’t wash out of a jungle infantry unit when things got tough, was a different story.

Cabrillo estimated that maybe 60 percent of his troops would fight in the presence of an enemy. The rest? Maybe they would run. Maybe they would hide.

That 60 percent might, he thought, be enough for the mission they were preparing to execute.

But the 53rd wasn’t done training. And the stage of the preinvasion process they were entering would hopefully harden the ones who didn’t have the devil in their eyes.

“Lead the way, Hector. Let’s see how this rabble looks today.”

He and Carvajal walked from the command trailer, a cheap prefabricated building propped up on blocks on the edge of a potholed parking lot. The training ground for the 53rd in their current deployment was the site of an abandoned shopping mall; the men had turned the mall into a barracks where they were packed into close quarters. Conditions were less than optimal.

Which was how Cabrillo wanted it.

The 4,569 men of the 53rd Jungle Infantry were formed into their three battalions, all wearing battle fatigues draped with bits of excess cloth in various shades of green, making them well-suited for action in the rain forests of southern and eastern Venezuela — and parts nearby. They straightened and saluted at the call for attention, and Cabrillo smiled.

He and Carvajal took their time reviewing the men, a motley collection of veterans, peasants, criminals, kids, aging men. Some were well fed, others much less so.

“They have the legs for ceremony,” he noted to Carvajal. “We will find out if they have cojones.”

The adjutant’s face betrayed worry at that.

“Hector, you have doubts?” asked Cabrillo, as they passed a final formation of men, a company of green recruits attached to the 533rd Battalion commanded by a porky captain named Perez, whom Cabrillo had known from a rather ugly action in the suburbs of the capital the previous year.

Carvajal’s mouth said nothing. His face said everything.

“Jefe,” he finally said, as the two finished reviewing the troops and dismissed them to begin their day’s training regimen, “this mission … I fear the men will not…”

“You doubt my leadership.”

“I didn’t say that, Jefe,” said Carvajal. “But to invade another country will bring consequences.”

“Which are those, Hector?”

“The Americans won’t stand for it.”

Cabrillo snorted.

“Los Yanquis? What will they do?”

“They could send their Navy. Or their Marines. Or they could send bombs or missiles.”

“They sent no one to Ukraine. They sent no one to Gaza. Who are they sending to Taiwan?”

“To Taiwan, Jefe?” Carvajal said as they entered the trailer.

There was a man inside. He was as tall as Cabrillo, about six-foot. But he was husky, unlike the coronel. And his features were oriental.

“Hector Carvajal,” said Cabrillo, “meet Mr. Xing.”

“Ni hao,” said Xing.

“Buenos días, señor,” Carvajal responded.

“To answer your question,” said Xing matter-of-factly, “they will send no one to Taiwan, and you will see that soon.”

“Yes, but…”

“They will send no one,” said Cabrillo, “and our mission will be a success.”

April 4, 2024, Atlanta, Georgia

“Hey Mike,” the email read, “I’m going to be in Atlanta tomorrow. What say we get together at the St. Regis? Dinner in the suite, bottle of Rip Van Winkle for after, and we’ll shoot the shit and talk about old times.”

“Sure, Pierce,” I responded. “It’ll be great to catch up.”

Most people would view the chance to sit down for most of the night with Pierce Polk, founder and CEO of the giant conglomerate Sentinel Holdings, as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I actually dreaded it.

Because I knew what was coming. It was going to be a classic Pierce move, and I really didn’t want it. I also couldn’t turn it down.

Pierce was my college roommate. We both graduated from Vanderbilt in 1995. By that point I’d more or less fallen in as the less-successful, less-fun wingman, the supporting actor to his lead role. And while Pierce was the hottest game in town, I was the recalcitrant and ungrateful friend who flew the coop rather than share in the glow of his stardom.

He’d already made his first million — hell, his first several million — by then. Pierce was an out-of-the-box thinker who could find big profits in utterly mundane things. He proved that by noting that the bars around the college, and even some of the bigger clubs on the strip, had a collection of weirdos, dunces, and slobs as bouncers. So he found football players, fitness hunks, karate dojo rats, and others who could handle themselves, and he put them to work as private security professionals working those doors. You’d think that was a nothing business, but six months after he started it as a sophomore in college, he had half the watering holes in the city paying him top dollar for a guy to work the door, security cameras, pour regulation, inventory management, and all kinds of other things.

Then he branched out into neighborhood private security. Then high-profile personal protection, with a bunch of Nashville country stars as clients. By that point he’d taken the bar security business interstate, with offices in all the big college towns in the Southeast and some in the Midwest.

Then Pierce sold the bar security business for a big chunk of change, and he kept the higher-end stuff.

All before he graduated college. Of course, it took him — and me — six years to do that. Pierce, because he was spending half his time building that business.

Me, because I was spending half my time getting wasted in the same bars Pierce was turning into his own personal ATM machines.

He put himself through college with what he was making in that business. He didn’t need to. Pierce’s father, who was a pretty strange bird, was a history professor at Catawba College in South Carolina who doubled as a clinical psychologist, and Connor Polk did an absolute number on his three sons.

Connor named Pierce’s older brother Harrison Buchanan Polk. Pierce’s full name was actually Fillmore Pierce Polk. The youngest of the three was Tyler Van Buren Polk.

Yes, Connor taught antebellum American history. So he named his kids for mediocre presidents from before the Civil War. And he told them he did it so they’d know they could never be mediocre.

Harrison joined the Marines right out of high school, then he went to Clemson for undergrad and Princeton for law school. He’s a lawyer for a hedge fund in Connecticut now. And Tyler moved to Silicon Valley right out of high school and rose all the way up to vice president at one of the big tech firms. You’ve heard of it.

These people were achievers, you understand. The kind of folks you started off being impressed by but soon got completely worn out with the more you were around them.

But Pierce was the most ambitious. Pierce had so much energy to him that he’d exhaust you.

By the time he graduated, he didn’t just have the personal security business. By then he’d rounded up some computer geeks, and he was doing network security. And that took off so quickly that a couple of years after he graduated, he ended up moving out to Palo Alto and took Sentinel Web Services into the stratosphere.

And by the time the 20th century ended and the 21st century began, Sentinel Security was doing port operations and logistics. Then Sentinel Construction popped up.

Then there was Sentinel Aerospace. Which led to Sentinel Communications, which was a satellite telecom firm that was launching birds into low orbit using the Indian and Russian space programs because they were dirt cheap. They’ve since moved on to using the domestic private operators, but they’ve got a ton of satellites in the air and profit very, very handsomely from those.

Everything Pierce touched exploded in a mushroom cloud of money. He hired great people, and then he filled them up with all of his dad’s behavioral psychology stuff, and it was basically a cult of capitalism that he was running.

Every one of those companies got big enough to take public. But Pierce refused to do it. He said that the minute a company went public it went to shit. That the people who would take over would lack the soul and the balls of the founder.

So he had a giant empire worth billions of dollars by the time he was 32, and practically nobody on a corporate board or stockholders who he had to answer to.

And by the time I was 32, I was, more or less, washed up.

While Pierce was turning himself into a captain of industry, or several industries as the case might be, I was — like I said — a lesser prodigy.

I’d gotten myself a job at the Vanderbilt Hustler, the school paper, my freshman year. By the time I was a sophomore I’d become something of a sensation. I managed to get a couple of tenured professors fired based on columns I’d written that exposed them for sundry matters of moral turpitude, and those two stories put me on the media map, at least a little.

They also made it so that I wasn’t welcome at the Vanderbilt Hustler my junior year. But that was OK, because by then I’d caught on at the Nashville Tennessean, not to mention freelance gigs for a panoply of publications left, right, and center. I did a lot of public-policy stuff, and some cultural stuff, but what seemed to juice my career was when I’d do things on elections and campaigns.

I didn’t really care at that point. I was agnostic about politics. What pissed me off was corruption, and at the time it was the Clintons who were the biggest crooks. And since I’d voted for Bill in 1992, mostly because he reminded me of my dad — and that’s a whole other story — it really pissed me off that he was a scandal-a-minute as a president.

But then Clinton was gone, and next was George W. Bush. And his bullshit was little better than Clinton’s, so before I knew it I was writing about what a clownshow the Bushes were.

And that, plus my telegenic face, I guess, was what got me the job at the American News Network, which led to me getting that prime-time show over there.

They called it Mike Holman Tells the Truth, which was a cool name, and I thought I mostly lived up to it. But it was criminal to give a 28-year-old kid a cable news show and all that came with that.

The show actually did pretty well. It lasted four years, and it made me a household name. Lots of fans, lots of money, lots of ego. I was a mess. Ended up marrying Lisa, who was entirely the wrong girl. My mom said at the wedding, “I give it six months.” I cut her off for that and didn’t talk to her again…

…for seven months, when that marriage ended in disaster.

And less than a year after that, Mike Holman Tells the Truth ended in disaster.

Not because of anything that happened on the air. Because of what happened at a New Year’s Eve party that the Rudolphs, who own ANN, threw.

Logan Rudolph didn’t actually have a management role at ANN. He was Irving Rudolph’s son, which essentially gave him free rein to make everybody at the network miserable. And Logan took a special dislike to me, for reasons I still don’t understand.

That night he showed up at the party with Lisa. And got handsy with her in front of everybody. I was still pretty messed up about her — all these years later I still am, really, even though we’re completely toxic together — and when I saw that, especially having had three cocktails too many, I got in that sniveling SOB’s face and told him if he didn’t leave her alone I’d break him in half.

And he knew I could do it.

But what he could do is break my career. And he did. Five days later I was out of a job, and that kick-ass apartment overlooking Central Park was my former address.

Luckily enough I had a couple of friends at WSB-TV in Atlanta, and I landed with a job as the investigative reporter there. But I didn’t last long; local TV news was miserable, the money sucked, and I was done working for anybody else.

So I raised a little capital and started Holman Media, and for the last 18 years that’s been me. It’s a pretty good little website, a decently successful YouTube and Rumble channel, and a little news operation I’m pretty proud of.

We don’t earn shit for profit, and making payroll is commonly an adventure. But I’ll say this — I’ve got a hell of a loyal staff. These guys are the best. Hell, I can’t run them off — and for business reasons I need to, because they’re all making more money than Holman Media can earn to pay them.

I’m house-poor, because I had to have a place in Buckhead to go with a smart-looking office in midtown, and I’ve been burning the candle at both ends trying to get ahead of the game.

And I’m not a centrist, apolitical guy anymore. The eight years of Barry Omobba saw to that. If you’ve followed the podcast and the website over the last however many years, you know what that’s about — the IRS scandal, Benghazi, the Clinton email stuff and a few of the other things we managed to break some stories on. I even had Derrick Gripper, the attorney general, call me a liar on national TV, which was the pinnacle of my career as far as I’m concerned.

The thing is, though, independent media has a massive target on its back. We get shadow-banned, fact-checked, censored, and shit on by Big Tech and Big Media, which includes Big Advertising, and that makes it damn near impossible to bring in revenue. And so I’ve been at a real crossroads, because I really didn’t think I could bump along like that much longer, even though keeping my team in their jobs had become a half-crusade, half-obsession and that had been more important than my own shitty finances.

Pierce knew I was broke. A few times he’d offered to buy Holman Media and make it a division of Sentinel Communications. I came up with unreasonable demands that he couldn’t agree to as a means of turning him down and making it his fault.

He knew what I was doing, of course. And he knew it was a pride thing. He understood. But what made it worse was that he kept trying, kept sweetening the pot.

Three years ago he offered me $3 million cash for Holman Media, plus a 5 percent share in Sentinel Communications, full editorial control of the site and the podcast channels, and a 10-year contract for the entire staff. It was utterly idiotic for me to turn it down, and I still did.

Pierce stayed away for a while after that. I didn’t hurt his feelings; it wasn’t that. He just knew that my wall was too high. He told me, “Look, let’s just leave that offer on the table, and when you’re ready to accept it, give me a call.”

That was the most infuriating part of all. Like an enduring reminder of my prideful dumbassery.

But if I took the offer, I’d be one of Pierce’s guys. I’d be joining the cult. And my whole adult life had been an exercise in being my own man, as shitty a set of outcomes as that had generated. So I couldn’t. I felt like an asshole, but I couldn’t.

And the craziest thing about it is I called my whole staff in and told them, “This is what Pierce offered, and I’m turning it down.” And do you know that not a single one of the nine either gave me shit about it or quit? Three years later, and every one of them is still with me despite the mad scramble to stay ahead of the cash flow.

It’s exhausting and inspiring at the same time. That’s what running a small business is like, I guess. But after 18 years you’re supposed to be at least a midsized business. Which is probably why I felt like I was coming to the end.

And, yes, all of this was self-inflicted. All I had to do was take Pierce up on his offer, and all those problems would go away. The Cult would take care of everything.

Ugh.

But now, there was this invitation at the St. Regis. I knew this was another round, and it would be harder than ever to resist him.

I made my way to the hotel — if you’re going to stay in Atlanta and you have the means, by the way, you can do a whole lot worse than the St. Regis; the place is a palace — and Pierce had a new girl meet me in the lobby.

“Hi, I’m Courtney,” she said, with that bubbly millennial aspirationally inoffensive smartass thing that you get from the typical 33-year-olds. “You must be Mr. Mike.”

“That makes me sound like a mail-order product,” I said.

“I’m sorry?”

“Never mind, Courtney. You’re here to take me up to Pierce’s suite?”

“Totally! Do I need to get you validated?”

“I took an Uber.”

“OK,” she said, pulling out a business card and thrusting it in my direction as she shepherded me toward the elevators. “Just email me the receipt and I’ll make sure you’re reimbursed for the ride.”

“That’s OK, Courtney. I think I can handle it.”

“Are you sure?” she said, as she held a room key card over the scanner and punched the button for the top floor. “I mean, a free Uber ride…”

“Courtney. Come on.”

“OK,” she said, “I guess I get it.”

I looked her over as the elevator slowly took us up to Pierce’s suite. She was a petite little thing, blonde, though not naturally so, and I’m not sure it was a good fit on her. She was wearing a shiny silver pantsuit, with a boxy jacket that made it impossible to know if she was a skinny girl or fat.

I figured it was the former. She had skinny legs. That I could tell from the tight pants.

“I like your suit,” I lied. “Is that the new style?”

“Oh my God!” Courtney said. “You don’t know? All the influencers are talking about it. So at Saks they’re…”

Just then, mercifully, we hit the top floor, and the door opened to a hallway manned by a couple of Himalayas in charcoal gray suits. Their names were Bruce and Latrell, I found out later, and when we exited the elevator, they patted both of us down.

“Y’all are pretty strict up here, huh?” I asked Latrell, as he gave me a groping that I’d last received at a place in Amsterdam back in 2014. Latrell was a lot cheaper than the Dutch version.

“They got threats,” he said. “Can’t be careful enough.”

I looked at Courtney. She nodded her head with as much seriousness as she could muster.

Courtney shepherded me to the end of the hall, then used her room key card to open the door to the suite. It was bigger than my house, and inside was the guy I’d been — unfairly, I guess — dreading.

“Holman! Damn, it’s good to see you, dude!”

“Hey, Pierce,” I said. “Thanks for having me up.”

“Shit, man. I can’t get you to come to me, so this is the best I can do. How are you?”

He asked that question, but I knew that he was extremely well informed about everything that was going on in my life and with Holman Media.

“You already know that, Pierce. What about you?”

What followed was a good 15-minute monologue about business, geopolitics, women, cars, and a few other things that came to Pierce’s mind. It was a bit of an effort to follow — to listen to Pierce was to listen to two, or maybe three, or even four conversations at the same time. He’d skip around between them. He’d be talking about the Maserati he’d just bought, and maybe he’d have it flown in so I could drive it, and speaking of that, did you hear about the stupid shit that was going on at Boeing? And then he’d note that sex scandal involving Olivia Rodrigo and that Delta stewardess on the flight to Salt Lake City, before telling me about the rocket launch that Sentinel Aerospace, which was now a division of Sentinel Communications thanks to the brand-new reorganization, had planned in New Mexico the next week.

Then dinner arrived. Steaks, as always. Pierce ate steak twice a day, breakfast and dinner. Internally I was relieved he wasn’t insisting that the hotel serve his own private reserve Wagyu that he was getting regularly flown in from Hyōgo Prefecture. But I could tell that he had noticed the difference.

The conversation petered down to a somewhat manageable level, but then there was the apple trifle and the bottle of Rip Van Winkle that Pierce unearthed from somewhere.

And when he opened it and poured a healthy four fingers over a big, square block of ice in a glass for each of us, I knew I’d be getting both barrels. Not of the bourbon.

“Look, Mike,” he said. “I know it’s been a long time since we talked about this, but that offer is still very much on the table.”

“Jesus, Pierce,” I said. “This again?”

“Hey, I’m your friend. I keep tabs on you. And I know you’re in shit shape. The mortgage on your place in Buckhead is…”

“My business,” I said. “It’s my business. It isn’t yours.”

“Mike, you may not understand this, but you’re actually an important guy. I’m not just saying that because we’re close. The work you’re doing is legitimate. You and your crew go where the corporate media assholes won’t, and you’ve done more in the last two years to expose the White House and the people who run that show than anybody. The least I can do is watch your back.”

“Yeah, well, thanks, I guess.” I couldn’t think of what else to say given that I knew what was coming next.

“Man, why don’t you let me buy that company and give you the resources to turn it into a big deal? We’ll buy a cable channel off the people at Discovery Networks and we’ll turn it into Holman News, and it’ll be your brand and your message, with a real opportunity to drag a shit-ton of ad revenue. Especially when we build a new app for it and bundle the website and…”

“How many times are we gonna talk about this?” I said. “I’m not gonna work for you, Pierce.”

“You wouldn’t be working for me! I don’t know anything about media. But I’m into telecom, so it’s stupid not to have a media division. This would be your show.”

“And you’d be on my ass about profit margin, which is something that journalism really shouldn’t…”

“You’re thinking about this all wrong, Holman. Remember — I don’t have stockholders. I don’t have a board I have to answer to.”

“Yes, you do.”

“They’re an advisory board, buddy. I can tell those guys to go screw themselves anytime I want. This is not some soulless zombie corporation like the one you used to work for. It can be our thing.”

I just looked at him.

“Fine,” he sighed. “One day, maybe. But I have something else. If you won’t let me buy your company, why don’t I hire you guys to handle Sentinel Holdings’ PR?”

“You have a PR department already, Pierce.”

“Yeah, but they don’t really do all that good a job. I could use some help.”

This was true — and it wasn’t.

The problem Pierce had with public relations was that he never had a filter. The guy got so rich so fast that by the time anybody was paying attention to things he said he was no longer in a position to fear a public backlash.

Or care what anybody thought.

And then he had to essentially fight a war with the Omobba administration, first over its attempts to force him to take Great Recession bailout money that came with all kinds of strings, then over a bunch of lawsuits its agencies — EEOC, EPA, DOE, DHHS, and a host of others — filed against him on a host of fronts over what I would call differing interpretations of federal regulations.

Pierce refused to hire lobbyists. He said it was morally wrong to do it. But he’d go and testify in front of Congress all the time. And one time the topic of lobbyists came up, and he gave that really famous quote.

You’ve seen the YouTube of this, no doubt. It’s when he essentially nailed the corruption of the system.

“I could hire an army of lobbyists,” he said. “But I don’t want to do that. Because I’ve seen how this works.

“Sure, I’ll hire lobbyists. And they’ll come up here and try to defend my interests in front of Congress. They’ll go and see your chiefs of staff and your legislative directors, and they’ll dig into the guts of whatever bills you’re passing up here, and they’ll attempt to protect Sentinel from all the awful things you could do to me.

“But when they’ve been successful doing that, and I don’t have anything more to fear from you, the natural progression — and I don’t count myself immune from it — is to ask, what’s next? And I know what’s next.

“Which is that since I’m paying these guys I’m going to get them to lobby you not just for our protection so we can succeed in a free market, but to warp that market so that we succeed by bending the rules to our favor. And that, folks, I can’t live with.

“So I’ll come up here and I’ll tell our story myself, and I’ll hire all the damn lawyers I have to in order to fight off whatever government aggressions you people and the bureaucrats up the street might dream up. But that’s it. The things I really want from government, like a balanced budget, no stupid wars, common sense, I know I can’t get. So you do your thing and I’ll do mine, and we’ll get along about as well as possible.”

That was back in 2014, and it was a huge sensation with the folks. But that was when Pierce started becoming “controversial.”

He didn’t care. He said whatever was on his mind. Then they pulled his Twitter account for saying that some prominent “transwoman” influencer was a man, and that nothing would change that fact, and that his bad imitation of a woman was disgusting. And they knocked him off Facebook when he posted that Joe Deadhorse, the Democrats’ nominee in 2020 who beat the incumbent Republican Donny Trumbull under some weird circumstances, had stolen the vote in Arizona.

And he went from being a regular on CNBC to getting ghosted, not that he cared a lot. Fox Business still had him on all the time. And his head of corporate communications had been on his ass to shut up about politics, policy, economics, and anything else not directly involving his business — which wasn’t something Pierce was comfortable doing.

Larger-than-life guys like Pierce Polk generally don’t hold anything in. Which was what made him so interesting and so exhausting all at the same time.

Just before he met me in Atlanta, Pierce had gotten himself in more hot water. He’d said Sentinel had a new company policy that they’d only hire Harvard grads in the janitorial departments because he didn’t think a degree from there was evidence of any actual scholarship. Omobba himself rebuked Pierce for that, which led to Pierce responding to the former president during an appearance on Maria Bartiromo’s show that his recent Netflix movie was “the worst damn thing I’ve ever seen.”

Pierce was at the point where you either loved him or hated him; there was no in-between.

And naturally there were loads of people asking him to run for president, for the Senate, for anything. He said he didn’t want any part of that, and besides, since he was a Republican — “not because I want to be, but because I have no freakin’ choice” — there was already a guy running.

He was talking about Trumbull, naturally. And of course that got even more people mad at him. Trumbull was every bit the love-him-or-hate-him guy that Pierce was. You’d think they’d be peas in a pod, but … not so much. Uneasy allies, maybe, would be the way to describe them.

Pierce did actually need some help with PR, even if it was just somebody who could take his phone away.

“Seriously, Mike,” he was telling me. “You’re the only guy I would trust with the job.”

“I dunno. Maybe,” I said. “But I haven’t done PR in a while, and it’s not really my game. It’s a sidelight at best. Let me think about it.”

“OK, fine,” he said. “But, now, this you can’t turn down, and it’s actually an urgent thing.”

“An urgent thing?”

“Yeah. Walter Isaacson is begging me for a sitdown, because he says he wants to write a biography of me. He actually wants it to be an authorized biography. Man, I don’t want Isaacson to be the guy who does that. I need you.”

“Ahhh. OK.”

“Look, this you have to do. All right? I’ll pay you 250 grand.”

I knew I couldn’t turn him down. I knew everything about Pierce. It would be the easiest quarter million dollars anybody had ever made, or so I thought. And I knew the book would sell. There were lots of people who thought Pierce was the distillation of the wildcat American capitalist, a breed that wasn’t just dying — it was being hunted out of existence.

“Pierce, if I write that book, I’m actually going to be objective. This isn’t going to be some hagiography.”

“What’s a hagiography?”

“A blowjob, Pierce. And that’s not happening. If I write your biography, it’s going to be a real story. I’m not just going to puff you up.”

“Actually, I don’t want you to. I think it would do me some good to read the truth about myself from somebody who really knows enough to have an opinion, and if that means there’s some negative, so be it.”

“Fine. Then under that understanding, I’ll write your biography.”

Pierce smiled, and he walked over to the writing desk, opened a computer bag and came back with a check for $250,000.

Some of you have held one of those in your hands. I did, once, when I was working at ANN. But it had been a long time, and when Pierce gave that check to me I actually felt a buzz.

And it wasn’t the Rip Van Winkle we’d been drinking.

“All right, then,” I said folding that check and thrusting it into my jacket pocket. “Where do we start?”

“Well, that’s up to you,” said Pierce, sitting back down to attack the rest of the bottle and beaming a billion-dollar smile at me. “But you really ought to see the new thing we’re building down in Guyana.”

“What? Guyana? What is this?”

“Oh, you’ll see, Mike. In fact, you ought to clear your schedule for tomorrow and the weekend and fly down with us.”

“Well, hell, I guess I do,” I said, the buzz of that $250,000 speaking to me telepathically from my breast pocket.

And I knew that after all this time, I was finally going to join the Cult of Pierce Polk.

April 5, 2024, Atlanta, Georgia  

I had a couple of hours to kill before the car was coming to take me to Fulton County Airport for the private flight to Pierce’s jungle paradise, so I was playing around with an outline for his biography.

That check for $250,000 went into the bank as soon as it opened, which was not a moment too soon. It was a nice change to have payroll go through without having to tap into the line of credit, and the knowledge that I wouldn’t have to worry about that for the next year had me sleeping like a baby the previous night.

I guess that was how being a member of the Cult of Pierce would go. Maybe it wasn’t so bad.

I’d told my staff about the new plan, and reactions were mixed. Tom LeClair, our business manager, was excited. Megan Rivers, who handled our ad sales, said this was going to be her inroad into getting a bunch of sponsorship dollars from Sentinel and all the people they do business with. But Colby Igboizwe, who edits the website, said something that threw a bit of a damper on things.

“I thought we weren’t going to sell out,” he said. “Is that what this is?”

“It’s me writing a book, Colby,” I said. “How much do we cover Pierce Polk on the site, anyway?”

“Easily twice a week, boss,” he retorted. “You know that.”

“Yeah, well…” I struggled to find a comeback, “I don’t know what this would change about that.”

“If nothing else,” Kaylee Russo, who produces the three podcasts we do, chimed in, “every time we talk about something Polk says, the folks will know that we work for him.”

“OK — none of you guys work for him,” I said. “I’m writing a book about him. That’s it.”

“That’s not how it’s going to be seen by the public, though,” said Sammy Chang, our web/IT guy.

“Don’t tell me you’re opposed to this, Sammy,” I said. “You’re the biggest Pierce Polk fanboy here.”

“Oh, hell no,” he said. “I don’t care what the public thinks. Take the money, write the book, let him buy us. Seriously. But just know, they’re going to think you’re Pierce’s guy from now on.”

I didn’t like that a whole lot. I looked around the room, though, and nobody was disagreeing with Sammy.

“What about you, Melissa?” I asked Melissa Swindell, my research assistant. Melissa was only 22, right out of Hollins. Her dad had a company that sold bedsheets, pillows, slippers, and pajamas, and they were our oldest sponsor. So when Pike Swindell called me at Thanksgiving and told me I needed a research assistant and sent me Melissa’s résumé, all I did was tell Megan to go pitch the Right Side of the Bed — yeah, that’s Swindell’s company — a nice increase in its annual sponsorship package to pay for Melissa’s salary.

We all thought Melissa didn’t know how she got the job with Holman Media. She knew from Day One. She was a kid with a lot of goofy ideas, but she saw through things as if she was a wise old woman.

It was irritating as hell, actually. Your research assistant is supposed to be a scared kid who does exactly what you tell her and doesn’t offer opinions. Instead, I got a conscience with coke-bottle glasses and judgmental looks.

“Do the book,” Melissa said. “The country needs Pierce Polk, and you might be the only one who can save him.”

At that, there were nods all around.

“Well, then,” I said, “he wants us to do something else for him. He wants to hire us to do PR consulting for him.”

“Oh, thank God,” said Megan. Before entering the exciting world of independent digital media advertising sales, she’d done PR work for the New Jersey State Lottery, and over the last few years when we’d picked up the occasional PR client, it was usually Megan who handled it.

“What’s he paying?” asked Tom.

“Heavy,” I said, and when I blurted out the number the whole staff broke into smiles.

“In for a penny, in for a million,” Colby said with a shrug. “If we’re going to be lackeys, let’s be well-paid lackeys.”

“Is this gonna be a problem for you, Colby?”

“Nah. I’ll get over it. At least my paycheck’ll be steady. And maybe fatter, right boss?”

“I think maybe the smart move is Christmas bonuses, at least this year,” I said, and the gang all offered grudging acceptance to that.

And that was it. That was the rebirth of Holman Media in a nutshell. Especially when I emailed Pierce and told him we wanted to accept the PR contract.

“Awesome,” came the response. “Hey, the car will pick you up at your office at 2:30. You’re gonna love the place in Guyana! I just know it!!!!”

Four exclamation marks. That was Pierce. You thought only chicks punctuated messages like that, and generally you were right. Chicks and billionaire cult figures who think the world is their oyster.

I didn’t know how I felt about this sudden change in my life. And as much as I valued the input from the staff, I couldn’t really draw much from their reactions. End of the day, all of those guys were still driven by the pursuit of a salary, and so none of them were objective about the idea they would suddenly be working for a profitable company.

Of course, so was I.

I called my mom to tell her the news. Amazingly, she answered the phone. Normally I’d get a return call.

“Michael, darling, so good to hear from you!” she said. There was what sounded like wind in the background.

“Hey mom. Where are you?”

“I’m on a boat! George is taking us fishing off Fernandina Beach!”

That was a pretty fair-sized hike from the Villages, where she lived.

“Wow,” I said. “Sounds like fun.”

“I think he’s going to pop the question. How about that?”

Mom was 75. She’d been a divorcée, then a widow after she and dad remarried. It’s a long story. This guy George was 80; he’d been a broker on Wall Street, and now he hustled golf games in the Villages, which was how Mom met him. When she moved down there from Cincinnati, where I grew up, after Dad died, she decided to take up golf, and she and George turned into an item.

It was idiotic that they’d get married, I thought, but nobody cared what I thought. If George made her happy, good for her.

Even though he was an asshole. George was worth millions, but he’d been a max donor to Sandy Bernard, the socialist senator from Vermont who kept running for president.

“We should have a wealth tax on billionaires,” George told me the last time I was down there visiting Mom. “It’s obscene what these people have.”

“George, you’re worth what? Twenty million?” I asked him. “If you think the rich don’t pay their fair share, then you can fix that by writing the government a check. Nobody’s stopping you.”

“Well, I can’t do that,” he said. “I’m on a fixed income.”

“Yeah, right. Like $2 million a year.”

“I pay taxes on that!”

“How much do you give to charity?”

That was when Mom jumped in to shut us both up. But I knew the answer to the question. That blowhard SOB had never given a dime to charity in his life, and now he was the great philanthropist with other people’s money.

I just smiled at him. He knew his argument was trash, which is why he glared at me.

“Mom,” I said, “I have some news. Can you hear me?”

“You’re going to want to talk louder!” she said. “It’s windy out here, and George is running the engine flat out!”

“Okay!” I said. “Listen, I’m writing Pierce’s biography!”

“His what?”

“BIOGRAPHY!” I said.

“Oh, that’s nice, dear. Is he paying you?”

“Yes! And I’m flying down to Guyana this afternoon!”

“Did you say Guyana, honey?”

“Yes, Mom!”

“Why Guyana?”

“Pierce has a place down there! He wants me to see it!”

Just then Megan poked her head into my office with a scowl on her face.

“Why are you screaming?” she mouthed at me.

“My mom,” I said. “She’s on a boat. What’s up?”

Megan shook her head. “Nothing,” she mouthed, “but you’re too loud.”

“OK,” I mouthed back and gave her a thumbs-up. Away she went.

“…and that’s where that psycho Jim Jones killed all his people,” my mother was saying. “I don’t think you should go.”

“This is not like that,” I said. “And come on! Pierce is nothing like Jim Jones!”

“Isn’t he, dear?”

“Of course not!”

Then again, I’d been referring to Pierce as a cult leader since college, and now I was going to Guyana with him, and I felt like I’d checkmated myself a little.

“It’ll be fine, Mom!” I said. “I’m just checking in. Be back in a couple of days and I’ll call you!”

“All right, honey,” she said, the connection breaking up a bit. “Be careful!”

That was it. Then I called Ashley, who I was not-all-that-seriously dating.

Or, better put, Ashley was not-all-that-seriously dating me.

“Hey, Ash,” I said when she answered. “I’ve got a little bit of news. I’m flying out this afternoon on a work thing and I’ll be gone a few days. But I’ll check in with you when I get there.”

“Oh,” she said, somewhat disapprovingly. “Where are you going?”

“South America. It’s a work thing.”

“Like Rio? Or Buenos Aires?”

“Nah, a little north of there.”

“Mike, there’s nothing north of there,” she said.

“I think that’s probably true, but anyway…”

“Well, I thought we were going to dinner on Saturday.”

“Did we make plans? I’m sorry. I didn’t know that I…”

“No. It’s fine. You’re right, we hadn’t put anything on the calendar.”

“Ashley, I apologize if this jams you up. It’s kind of a big deal. I’m writing a new book, and I’ve got to head down to Guyana to do some interviews…”

“You’re writing a book about Jim Jones? I thought all the people you’d interview about him are already dead.”

“No, Ash. This is a book about Pierce Polk.”

“What’s Guyana got to do with Pierce Polk?”

“He’s building … something down there. He wants me to see it.”

“Hmm.”

“What?”

“And you didn’t invite me to go with you.”

“It’s apparently in the middle of the jungle, sweetie. Probably a good idea that I scout it out before I’d make you come down there.”

“Oh, right. Like I’m some delicate flower who can’t handle herself.”

“Well, they say that the black caiman that lives in the Essequibo River can grow as big as 20 feet. Not to mention the Bushmaster snakes that grow up to 10 feet long…”

“Fine. I get it. You don’t want me there.”

“I have no idea what Pierce has going on down there. He just said I’ll find it interesting. Maybe I’ll take you down there on the next trip.”

“Sure. Whatever. It’s … whatever.”

“Hey, I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you when I get back.”

“OK. You do that. I’m hanging up now.”

And she did. That wasn’t Ashley being rude, it was Ashley being Ashley. I was sort of hoping that I could tell her what was going on and how it might change things with me and the business, but at the end of the day I was beginning to realize that it wouldn’t.

To Ashley, I was the sort-of-famous guy she was dating. That was basically it. I wasn’t rich, I looked good in a suit but not so much in a swimsuit, at least not anymore, I couldn’t claim that I was overly successful, really, and she’d told me that I was “emotionally unavailable,” which I thought was more like projection on her part.

Honestly, I don’t really know why I cared what Ashley thought. She was the sort-of-hot-and-interesting woman I was dating. She was 40, she was a single mom with a daughter who was an absolute wreck of a teenager — the whole blue-hair-and-piercings-and-never-ending-angst game was super-strong with Jordan — and she was an associate at a law firm in downtown Atlanta that was never going to make her a partner. Ashley had amazing blue eyes and a fitness-model body, and she could carry a conversation when she felt like it. But she loved to talk about how terrible her life was and how her daughter was such a disappointment. She’d even complained that Jordan had demanded to move in with her father.

“Well, isn’t he married with two little kids?” I had asked her during that conversation. This was about a week before Pierce and I did our deal.

“What difference does that make?”

“Maybe she wants to connect with her brother and sister.”

“Half-brother. Half-sister.”

“Right, but that’s still probably a big deal for her.”

“She’s just trying to get back at me. That hair, her appearance, they’re just an effort at pissing me off.”

“But you complain about her a lot, Ash. Maybe you ought to let her move in with her dad if that’s what she wants.”

“Oh my God! Are you kidding me? Never!”

“I’m just saying,” I said, and caught the laser beams she was shooting at me from her eyes, “but I’ll stop. It’s not my place to say anything.”

Especially when I would have had to admit what I was really hoping for was to get rid of Jordan. She was a bitchy little kid who hadn’t said a civil word to me in the three months since I’d met her.

It struck me that the thing to do was tell Ashley it was time for both of us to move on, because this wasn’t really going anywhere. I could do better, especially with the new lease on life that selling my soul to Pierce had offered me.

Right? The whole point of taking the deal was that my life would get easier and my professional batteries recharged. Why hang on to things that don’t work?

I figured I’d think about that on the plane. Hell, maybe Ashley would do us both a favor and break up with me when I got back.

So as I was jotting down notes for the chapter outline of Pierce’s biography, I pulled up a link on YouTube that I’d saved.

It was Pierce. He was testifying in front of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee back in November of 2023.

The subject of his testimony had been about how America was dangerously vulnerable to EMP and cyberattacks. Like, our power grid would collapse if it was hit with an EMP, and we needed to harden our ports, industrial facilities, communications, and other stuff. Pierce had actually spent a few billion dollars on hardening Sentinel’s assets against EMP strikes, and Sentinel had launched a TV ad campaign bragging about that and asking why other big companies hadn’t.

He mentioned that — obnoxiously, I thought, but on the other hand he had a right to, because it was criminal how little most of Corporate America, like the electric utilities and cell phone providers and others, had done on that subject — during the opening statement he gave.

But no sooner had he finished his statement then he got waylaid.

The chairman of the committee was George’s hero Bernard. And this wild-haired dipshit was pontificating about Pierce’s greed.

“In a fair society,” Bernard was bleating in that crappy Brooklyn accent of his, which you’d think would grate on Vermonters but apparently not, “there would be a significant wealth tax on men like you for hoarding your resources away from the public.”

This came literally right after Pierce had bragged about the money he had spent to safeguard his company’s operations against an EMP attack, that the country was otherwise vulnerable to thanks to the inaction of the federal government. Bernard hadn’t listened to a word Pierce said.

“Excuse me, senator,” said Pierce, “but how is it fair for the government to confiscate the assets of private citizens without recompense?”

“I’m sorry?” asked a confused Bernard.

“The takings clause of the Fifth Amendment,” said Pierce. “‘Nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.’”

“What does that have to do with what I said?” asked Bernard.

“You’re talking about stealing my money,” said Pierce. “You’re not talking about taxing anything. You’re talking about making me poorer with no other purpose than that. Where’s my just compensation?”

“We’d use those assets to fund the government,” said Bernard. “That’s your compensation.”

“With all due respect, senator, nothing the government would do with my money or my businesses would be remotely as good as what I could do on my own. Take dealing with the EMP threat, for example…”

“For you, Mr. Polk,” said Bernard. “For you. Not for the masses of the people who suffer” — he pronounced it “suffa” in that Brooklyn brogue of his — “as you go along your way making a profit at the expense of the planet…”

“The planet? Somehow the planet is mad at me now?”

There were chuckles audible in the crowd, and Bernard was not amused.

“As I was saying, the profit you make is used for your benefit and not for the world.”

“My companies protect high-value people who might otherwise suffer physical harm. We make sure ports operate efficiently so that needed items get where they need to go faster and more cheaply. We have a construction company that builds residential, commercial, and industrial facilities, not to mention roads and other transportation infrastructure. We provide network security for major companies so their assets aren’t stolen by our enemies. We’re in telecommunications, which enhances the ability of people to exchange information and ideas. Are you telling me that those things only benefit me?”

“How many houses do you have, Mr. Polk? How many does one man need?”

“I have eight houses, senator. And I’m considering building another one.”

“No man needs eight houses.”

“I see. Don’t you have four? So if I sold half of my places I suppose I’d then become virtuous enough for you?”

The chuckles turned into laughs. Bernard was becoming flustered.

“In fact,” said Pierce, “I can’t think of a single thing you’ve contributed, senator, that benefits the world rather than you. How’d you make the money to afford those four houses?”

“You’re not asking the questions, Mr. Polk.”

“That’s OK, senator. I already know the answer. Your scam is that you sell books. But your presidential campaigns are the buyers of those books, not the public. Essentially what you’re doing is you’re running a money laundry, and then you want to come to me and tell me I don’t provide enough value to deserve to keep what I earn. It’s a joke, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Now — can we discuss cybersecurity and the EMP threat like I had hoped to do today?”

I remembered watching that exchange and thinking Pierce would be lucky to get out of D.C. alive after he had it. Bernard, after all, was the dickhead who had run around the country in 2016 running for president and demanding a “political revolution” in America, and then one of his supporters had shot up the Republican congressional baseball team’s practice and nearly killed the majority whip. Bernard got away with a mealymouthed denial that he was never for violence, and that was it.

Pierce had emailed me after that shooting and said it was a turning point for him. “I can’t take it anymore,” he said. “These politicians are killing the country, and we’re just letting them do it.”

He hadn’t been political prior to that. That was when he started.

And now he was a bull in a china shop.

Not long after he was done with Bernard at that hearing, Polk caught a line of questioning from Suzi Hirohito of Hawaii, who had a reputation as one of the dumbest people in the Senate. Hirohito was about to burnish that reputation nicely.

“Mr. Polk,” she began, “how many stockholders do you have?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “Between the six companies, maybe … a dozen or so. Including my two ex-wives, who definitely don’t have a voting share.”

There were giggles from the audience.

“How is that possible? They’re big companies.”

“Yes, they are, ma’am.”

“But they have such a small number of shareholders!”

“That’s because they’re privately held. We’ve never taken any of the Sentinel companies public.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’ve never needed to. And I don’t like public companies.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Senator, if I were to take one of my companies public, it wouldn’t be mine anymore. And that would make it a worse company. I don’t like making things worse.”

“Why would your company be worse with public shareholders?”

“Too many cooks spoil the soup. I would then have a board to answer to and the SEC to deal with. It isn’t worth it.”

“But can’t you raise more capital by going public?”

“We’ve never had trouble raising capital. Our credit is excellent. We borrow at advantageous rates.”

Hirohito was getting exasperated.

“Let me help you, senator, because I know where these questions are coming from,” said Pierce. “I’m well aware that a very large percentage of your campaign contributions come from RedGuard Capital, so much so that one could say they own you. And while we’re telling the truth here, let’s recognize that institutional capital funds like RedGuard tend to gobble up all the public companies worth owning stock in, and when that happens they’re able to dictate all kinds of stupid things to the management of those companies.”

“Stupid things?” scoffed Hirohito.

“Yes, senator. Stupid things. Like ESG and DEI, and all kinds of other uneconomic, fantasyland ideas that serve neither the bottom line nor the public. Why would I play that game when I don’t have to? Thanks, but no thanks.

“And yes, I can see what’s coming because I’ve heard lots of rumors that at some point next year your side is going to launch a legislative — and probably regulatory — attack on privately held companies like mine. This little conversation between us is a prelude to that. You didn’t hide it very well. Do you have any questions about cybersecurity or EMP? Have you considered that an EMP over Oahu would result in making Honolulu unlivable for six months? Are you even interested in that question?”

Bernard was banging the gavel furiously and scolding Pierce about how he wasn’t allowed to ask questions at the hearing, while all of the Republicans on the committee were standing and applauding him, and Pierce was just sitting there with a shit-eating grin and looking at Bernard. He’d torn apart a couple of planned-out attacks, stupid though they were, that the majority on the committee had laid in for him, and it was clear they weren’t in his league.

I was thinking that the majority of the potential buyers for the book would want it to focus on Pierce’s newly minted political relevance, and all the red meat he’d splattered all over the walls would need to be featured in order to reach them. But what was a lot more interesting to me was the rest of it.

Sure, he didn’t want to take his companies public, and what he told Hirohito was the truth. But maybe not all of it. What I knew was that Pierce didn’t want shareholders because Pierce couldn’t stand the idea of somebody else having the power to tell him what to do. I knew that was part of the psychology of the man.

But do you write that? If you do, how do you write it? Is that a strength, or a weakness?

It’s both, obviously.

I knew I’d have to kick that around a bit. And I’d want to talk to Pierce about it. I needed to gauge just how uncomfortable I could make him without him shutting down or shutting me out.

And how much of this was I even going to discuss with Pierce before the book was finished? Was this biography going to be Pierce’s story, or mine?

His, obviously. But I was the guy in control of it. I needed to figure out what that meant.

I’d told Megan to come up with a PR strategy document I could bring down to South America to discuss with Pierce, and I noticed that she’d knocked it out in less than a morning. I knew that because it popped up on my email, and 20 seconds later she popped into my office.

“Got your paper done,” she said. “You packed?”

“Not really,” I said. “I don’t even have a clue what I’m supposed to wear down there. I have a bunch of t-shirts and shorts and shit like that. I assume it’s hot.”

“Mike,” she said, shaking her head, “the last thing you want to wear in the jungle is shorts.”

“Why not?”

“Mosquitoes? Hello?”

“Shit. Well, I did pack a pair of jeans…”

“Is that your bag?” she asked, pointing to an ugly plastic box with a half-protruding handle and a couple of worn rollers that was leaning against the couch.

“You know it is.”

Megan grabbed it and dropped it onto the couch, unzipping it and cracking it open.

“No, no,” she muttered. “No, no, and definitely no.”

“My choices don’t meet with your approval?”

“You’re going to look like an idiot American tourist,” she said. “How much time do you have before they pick you up?”

“I have…” I said, looking at the clock on my laptop, “…one hour and 45 minutes.”

“Great. I’ll be back before then. Give me your Visa card.”

“Oh, I don’t think our relationship has progressed quite that far, honey,” I joked.

“I don’t have time for this, goofball,” she snapped at me. “I’m going to hit Orvis and Dick’s Sporting Goods and get you something appropriate for this trip.”

“Huh,” I said, proffering the instrument of my financial diminution. “Seems you’re more excited about this than I am.”

“Maybe so,” she said. “But I’m definitely not going to have our CEO looking like he doesn’t belong.”

“OK, fine. But I’m not wearing a pith helmet or jodhpurs.”

“Oh, shut up,” she said, shaking her head and leaving.

Colby came next, asking if I was going to file any stories or record any podcasts when I was on the trip. I said yes, I’d probably do something.

Then he asked me if we were going to have any extra money in the budget, because he wanted to hire a kid out of Texas who’d built an X following of half a million people with hilarious memes mostly making fun of Joe Deadhorse, the president. Specifically, there was the recent claim Deadhorse had made that he was a Lakota Sioux Indian, something that was perfect fodder because (1) Deadhorse had never claimed to have Native American blood before, and (2) Deadhorse made lots of idiotic claims like that lately, lending an air of hilarity to current events that just screamed for satire.

And this kid, whose X handle was MemeCracker110 but whose actual name (we found out his name because MediaMatters had doxxed him and then some asshole had swatted him four nights in a row) was Billy Ray Olivera, was a genius. I especially liked the stuff he was doing that called Deadhorse “Chief Spreading Bull.”

“If we capture that and start up a Meme O’ The Day page on the site,” Colby was telling me, “it could increase site traffic by 20 percent. Maybe more.”

“How much does this kid want?”

“Fifty grand a year, plus traffic bonuses. Pretty cheap.”

“To make memes? Are you kidding me?”

“He’ll pay for himself. Megan can tell you. Where is she, anyway?”

“Off buying me jungle gear with my credit card.”

“She’s the most valuable one here.”

“Probably true.”

“Anyway, I’m talking to Billy Ray now. Give me the go-ahead and I’ll lock it down.”

“Does he do anything else but make memes? Can he write? Can he do a podcast?”

“Billy Ray?” Colby was snickering. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“What is he, like an idiot savant?”

“Ummm…”

“He’s an idiot savant.”

“Let’s just say he has a lot of time for Photoshop on his computer.”

“Fine, whatever. Yeah, hire him. If he doesn’t juice site traffic I’m gonna leave you in Mechanicsville after dark.”

Colby gasped. “That’s it. I’m going to the EEOC. My boss is a racist and this is a hostile work environment.”

I gave him a smirk. Colby was always joking about playing the race card. The guy had a signed picture of Clarence Thomas on the wall of his office.

“Shaddap, Iggy,” I laughed.

“Don’t come back a jungle bunny,” he said as he left. I shot him the bird.